Category: Battles to watch

Another busy month, another late edition of Battles to Watch. For the record, this is actually the second month in a row where the best battle features Daylyt in a ski mask. Poke around the site once you’re done here to check out what else we’ve been working on.

What with our Vendetta 2 coverage/trip to LA/busy lives in general, we never got around to doing our monthly installment of the five battles to watch from April. Here’s a quick version, for posterity’s sake.

After a dry February that produced few quality battles, March has reaffirmed our faith in battle rap. URL ended its drought by finally dropping Cortez vs JJDD and will be back to weekly releases now that their Ultimate Freestyle Friday competition has started airing on BET. KOTD has been dropping their Blackout 4 videos weekly on the main channel and have been quick to release footage from Vancity’s Gastown event. Don’t Flop has released only U.K. vs U.K. matchups this month, and hasn’t made much noise with North American fans outside of a solid battle between Unanymous and Olde English. UW hasn’t made a peep about an official release of their High Stakes footage, but whatever, everybody already watched the PPV or a bootleg of it.

Even with all that going on, four of the five battles we’re highlighting below come from smaller leagues. Don’t sleep.

For whatever reason, February was a relatively weak month for battles, even with the release of KOTD’s much-hyped title match. Regardless, between the obvious choices and a couple hidden gems, we cobbled together a respectable list of four great battles, plus a bonus pick that’s worth your time.

The guys at T.O. Battle Blog have very kindly passed the rounding-up-good-battles mantle to me this time. These are, in my opinion, the five best battles that the first month of 2014 EVER could possibly muster worldwide. Rhymes were said. Feelings were hurt. Ninja masks were worn. It’s all simply a month in the life of battle rap.

This month saw a strong crop of battles released by DF, KOTD, URL and some upstart leagues, led by footage from Battle of the Bay 6 and 5th Birthday Weekend. Here we highlight some of the most interesting battles from November.

BIGG K VS ILLMACULATE

It’s a tired, overused line to describe a close battle as having as having “no losers.” But the Illmaculate/Bigg K battle is one time when that’s undeniably the case. Sure, there are some people firmly entrenched in the pro-Illmac or pro-Bigg K camps, but so many others shift their allegiances with each viewing.

For Illmac, it was a glorious return to KOTD, enough so that any future Fresh Coast card will feel incomplete without him. For Bigg K, it was perhaps the finest KOTD debut in history, making instant fans out of those who weren’t familiar with his work. Bigg K recently said on Facebook that his battle career is done. Fortunately, he has a battle booked against Jonny Storm in April and posted this on RMBVA.